its sunday morning.  there is something in the air.  the hidden scent of summer; a sun-kissed morning breeze.  quick to rise but slow in my pace as i stroll carlton gardens, a sanctuary of greens.  passerby pedestrians either greet me with a charming nod or kind ‘hello’.  the birds sing their song while the water fountains flow. my pace does not quicken; I am in no rush to go.

through the tree-lined pathway along the museum bend dogs wrestle in the grass while strollers abode swish past.  the gardens give way to gertrude street, a rummaged neighbor of sorts.  on one side are storefronts of culinary delight, on the other, a brazen of unforgotten sights.  ahead on the street corner a disheveled woman stands still, pants down around her ankles, asks me for the time.  i tell her “i am sorry i do not know the time”.  she simply mutters something back to me, her tongue caught up in rhyme.  i wish that i could clothe her, for everyone to be fine.  tis here on the corner of gertrud(ification) and brunswick(ed) streets where i become ever-more aware of our disgraceful social divide.  lingering back at home while the neighbours slowly rise i sit there in the garden haunted by the woman’s sad and painful eyes.

its sunday morning again.  but a different scene than last.  this time i am aware of the stillness between the freedom of cycling down the quiet city streets and arriving to stroke the piano keys at the conservatorium of music.  i am aware of it again—the stillness—that exists between my melodic learnings and my localization with food  and its farmers at the queen victoria market.  wrapping myself up with the morning paper and delicious, caffeinated nectar i am fully conscious.  i become fully aware … aware of the stilled silence, this sunday morning bliss.

two different sundays, arose by two different realms of thought; however, both entwined by stillness, the “formless and timeless dimension within ourselves” that instill our awareness, that stirs our being, whether it’d be fabulous or fraught. 

the sound of silence — and the peace of stillness — that i find in amongst some of my favourite things: a dark ale, my journal, a book and a plant.